The 1990s band Dave Grohl wanted to rule the world: “It cannot be beaten”
When Dave Grohl first joined Nirvana, being one of the leading forces in grunge wasn’t usually the first thing on his mind.
He wanted the chance to make artsy pop rock that no one had heard before, and even though Kurt Cobain always thought that the band stuck to the same roots as punk rock, that didn’t stop the rest of the world from falling in love with their melodies. But even after becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, Grohl figured that he could use the little star power that he had in the band to prop up some of his favourite acts at every opportunity.
It sounds impossible these days, but Grohl was the quiet member of Nirvana who usually kept to himself, and with someone who had the star power that Cobain had, there was no point in asking what the drummer had to say all the time. That suited Grohl fine most of the time, but when you look at everyone talking about the storied history of what grunge music was supposed to be, a lot of the time Grohl spent in the spotlight was taking the piss out of the genre to a certain degree.
No one in the band really considered themselves a grunge band, and even when the genre was at its peak, a lot of the biggest acts out at the time weren’t all that interested in being one of the leaders of a new movement. They were just trying to make a few decent indie rock tunes, but it’s like you can’t hear a lot of the trademark pieces of grunge in there whenever Grohl performed with the band. They were talking about the more melancholic parts of their lives, and Grohl was willing to hit as hard as he could to make his punk rock heroes proud, but his favourite bands were coming a bit further south than Seattle.
Granted, anything that was coming out of California at the time of grunge was automatically going to be considered the sell out version of the genre, but life wasn’t all about making hair metal down there, either. Sure, the Sunset Strip was inundated with a bunch of wannabes trying their best to make a name for themselves, but there were also more than a few people like Rage Against the Machine and Jane’s Addiction that were showing people a completely different kind of musical ride.
But Josh Homme was already on the cusp of something a bit more interesting when forming Kyuss. He liked the idea of making music that was a lot heavier than anything that he had heard before, and while their songs sounded like some of the gnarliest riffs that Tony Iommi never wrote, Grohl knew that there was something familiar about hearing an album like Blues For the Red Sun for the first time.
Even when he was working on In Utero, Grohl couldn’t help but hail Kyuss as the second coming of what alternative music was supposed to be, saying, “The future of grunge is now evolving out of Palm Strings, California. It’s a band called Kyuss. Their album Blues for the Red Sun is the album of 1992. It cannot be beaten. They’re from the desert, and I suppose they eat a lot of mushrooms and smoke a lot of pot. They just rule the world. It’s a desert thing.”
This probably explains why Grohl had such reverence when he joined Homme in Queens of the Stone Age later on for Songs for the Deaf. He wanted to create the kind of power that he heard his friend was capable of back in the day, and you can hear him playing with the same vigor that hevigour did in Nirvana when pulling off tracks like ‘Hanging Tree’ and ‘No One Knows’.
His love of Homme may have helped cause a rift between Foo Fighters in the 2000s, but Grohl was never going to give up his gig being in one of the greatest rock and roll bands that he ever played with. He could see the potential all the way back when Kyuss was formed, and even if he never got the chance to play with them, getting Queens of the Stone Age over the line was the next best thing.
